Nvidia RTX 50 Series - Problem and a Fix

[toktik]

About a week ago, I received an RTX 5080 Founders Edition card. I installed the card in a Z690-based MSI motherboard and connected several monitors using the three DisplayPorts.

Upon boot, I found that the monitors (Acer ConceptD CM2) would not display anything prior to the boot, so access to BIOS settings or selecting a boot partition were not possible.

I tried various fixes, but nothing worked, so I was prepared to return the card this afternoon. Just before packing the card for shipment, I tried another online search to see if anyone had a similar problem. I found several hits specific to the RTX 5060 cards, and the problem was resolved by updating the Nvidia 5060 firmware. Additional information indicated that the firmware fix would also work on other 50 series cards, including the RTX 5080.

I downloaded and installed the Nvidia firmware, and now the RTX 5080 card is working fine. I see all the startup messages and can interact with the system to change settings, boot order, etc.

Details about the firmware update tool I used are located here:

NVIDIA GPU UEFI Firmware Update Tool for RTX 5060 Series

 

[BillyBobSenna]

Could you have used the cpu graphics capability to have booked your computer?

 

[toktik]

Could you have used the cpu graphics capability to have booked your computer?

I did test with the integrated graphics and was able to see the entire boot process. After completing the firmware update for the new graphics card, I can see the entire boot process using the RTX 5080.

A workaround, before the firmware update, was to configure the motherboard BIOS to make the integrated graphics primary, but I didn't want the to run a monitor off the integrated card for performance reasons.

My current configuration is running Kubuntu as my operating system and using VMware Workstation Pro (version 17) to run Windows 11. The performance of the virtual machine seems to be improved using the new card, but I haven't run any benchmarks on the system yet.

The new card is only two slots wide, so it fits directly in my motherboard without covering a PCI Express slot I use for a USB card. The previous graphics card was wider, so I had to use it via a riser cable. My understanding is that PCI Express 5 graphics cards are known to have problems with riser cables, so I'm glad I can plug it directly into the motherboard.

 

[kelpdiver]

thanks for the post - might be relevant to a new build that I've been leaving on the backburner.